A lighting system e.g., a digital addressable lighting interface (“DALI”) system, includes a control system for controlling an operation of a plurality of lighting elements (e.g., LEDs) via a lighting driver including a microcontroller for controlling the plurality of lighting elements based on control signals received from the control system. The control system controls various operational modes of the lighting elements such as on mode and a standby mode. During on/mode, the control system sends an output reference signal to the microcontroller, while during a standby mode it sends a standby control signal to the microcontroller, to turn the lighting elements off, and the lighting driver goes into a low power consumption mode.
In a typical lighting system, as shown FIG. 1, a microcontroller generates two control signals, a output reference voltage control signal (V2) and a standby voltage control signal (V3) and a circuit 20 is provided for supplying the signals V1 and V2 to a lighting driver to control the operational modes of lighting elements. Since there are two separate voltage control signals V1 and V3, two independent isolation devices (e.g., optocouplers) are typically required between the microcontroller and the power components of the LED driver, for both a reference control signal and a standby control signal.
It is desirable to provide a single source to generate both the reference control signal and the standby control signal, reducing component costs and required printed circuit board space utilization.